From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Sun Jun 15 2003 - 20:02:31 MDT
On 6/15/2003 Lee Corbin wrote:
> > > I'm interested in knowing how strongly you (and others) rate
> > > various assumptions here. Two immediate questions are
> > >
> > > 1. To what degree would you say that the current world sample
> > > of humanity arose via evolutionary selection processes?
> >
> > Human genes evolved via natural selection just like other life
> > on Earth. Recently cultural evolution has influenced behavior.
>
>You were just as infuriating in real life ;-) But thanks
>for answering at all: that is more polite than just ignoring
>uninteresting questions. But I do not discern a great urge
>to discuss this issue with non-experts.
I don't mind discussing this with you; I just didn't see where you
were going with your questions. Care to rephrase?
> > > 2. What proportion of human beings in the United States would
> > > you guess to be Bayesians?
> >
> > There has never been and will never be an exact Bayesian - it
> > is computationally intractable.
>
>Ah yes, I should have said *non-exact* Bayesians!
It all depends on how close you look. From a distance people are
roughly Bayesian in many ways. But if you look real close at
particular decisions you can certainly see a lot of error, and
sometimes you can also see systematic deviations. So how big
a deviation is "big"?
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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